LETTER 39.

TO MR. RUSHTON.

“Gibraltar, August 15. 1809.

“Mr. Rushton,

“I have sent Robert home with Mr. Murray, because the country which I am about to travel through is in a state which renders it unsafe, particularly for one so young.  I allow you to deduct five-and-twenty pounds a year for his education for three years, provided I do not return before that time, and I desire he may be considered as in my service.  Let every care be taken of him, and let him be sent to school.  In case of my death I have provided enough in my will to render him independent.  He has behaved extremely well, and has travelled a great deal for the time of his absence.  Deduct the expense of his education from your rent.

“BYRON.”

It was the fate of Lord Byron, throughout life, to meet, wherever he went, with persons who, by some tinge of the extraordinary in their own fates or characters, were prepared to enter, at once, into full sympathy with his; and to this attraction, by which he drew towards him all strange and eccentric spirits, he owed some of the most agreeable connections of his life, as well as some of the most troublesome.  Of the former description was an intimacy which he now cultivated during his short sojourn at Malta.  The lady with whom he formed this acquaintance was the same addressed by him under the name of “Florence” in Childe Harold; and in a letter to his mother from Malta, he thus describes her in prose:—­“This letter is committed to the charge of a very extraordinary woman, whom you have doubtless heard of, Mrs. S——­ S——­, of whose escape the Marquis de Salvo published a narrative a few years ago.  She has since been shipwrecked, and her life has been from its commencement so fertile in remarkable incidents that in a romance they would appear improbable.  She was born at Constantinople, where her father, Baron H——­, was Austrian ambassador; married unhappily, yet has never been impeached in point of character; excited the vengeance of Buonaparte by a part in some conspiracy; several times risked her life; and is not yet twenty-five.  She is here on her way to England, to join her husband, being obliged to leave Trieste, where she was paying a visit to her mother, by the approach of the French, and embarks soon in a ship of war.  Since my arrival here.  I have had scarcely any other companion.  I have found her very pretty, very accomplished, and extremely eccentric.  Buonaparte is even now so incensed against her, that her life would be in some danger if she were taken prisoner a second time.”

The tone in which he addresses this fair heroine in Childe Harold is (consistently with the above dispassionate account of her) that of the purest admiration and interest, unwarmed by any more ardent sentiment:—­

      “Sweet Florence! could another ever share
      This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: 
      But, check’d by every tie, I may not dare
      To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
    Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.